Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale

Skillfully introduced and selected by Lauren Groff, this excellent collection of 25 short stories by Hale (1908–1988) reintroduces an overlooked master of the genre. Hale explores the borderland between inner truth and outer obligation, otherness and conformity, what remains and what is lost, what humans want to be and what is actually within their power to do. In the superb “To The North,” affluent summer visitor Jack Werner feels truly at home only among the hardworking Finnish community in the New England town of Graniteside. Rejected by the Finns after he kisses one of their daughters, he gets a second chance to regain their acceptance years later. In another of the collection’s finest works, 1934’s searing “The Double House,” a despairing young boy sees his father’s happiness as his only reason to survive. In “The Bubble,” Hale deftly evokes the inner experience of pregnancy. “Those Are as Brothers” probes prejudice and empathy in its story of the divorced American wife of an abusive German refugee and an anti-Semitic German nanny in her employ. The elderly woman of “How Would You Like to Be Born...” attempts to silence the judgments of her late sister when she receives a letter appealing for donations for the defense of three black teenagers arrested for killing a white farmer. Extensively published in the New Yorker and the winner of 10 O. Henry Awards, Hale’s insightful, artfully constructed stories remain irresistible—and relevant—today. (Oct.)